The Backside of My Life

I only have one section of a cross-stitch project left to do that I started about 15 years ago, a 2-inch square window. The design is a country scene: a black iron pot-belly stove with a blue coffee pot, a wooden chair with a gray cat sleeping in it, braided rug, and basket of apples, with a pretty curtained window behind. The backside is a faded image of the pattern. The details can’t be seen, such as the face of the gray cat.

This present life is like the backside of the cross-stitch picture–only a faded image of what the real life is like. The life we are living today is “cross-stitching” our eternal home. Every day you live makes another stitch in the pattern of your life.

Bright yellow is stitched by the happy occasions of your life. The blues are from the tranquil days. The golds and silvers are not how much money you have, but from the treasures of family and good friends. The browns and blacks from the hard days of life—financial set-backs, marital problems, family misunderstandings, health problems.

Red stitches are true love, pink and blue for the precious children of your life. Oranges for the beautiful sunsets, white for the snowfalls, gray for your senior years.

This present life is not the real life. It is a temporary training session, a preparation place for the life to come. Paul reminded us that the things we see are not the eternal things, because they are temporary and will pass away some day.

“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Corinthians 4:18

This life on earth is temporary, passing away, day by day. Some day you will cross over to your permanent eternal home, where the brilliant colors of a life well lived will be revealed.